Birthday Pics!

We have been so busy worrying about jobs & doctor appointments that I forgot to post birthday pics. We had a quiet, thankful family cake time.

one small homemade birthday cake:)

Daddy helped to support Little Man. See how the boys wiped the icing off the cake? :)

My awesome Hubby!

Capt. Chaos is just now at the age to really undeerstand what birthday is & cannot wait for his 4th!

One happy year old boy!

We were sweating it there for awhile...

But we are going to be OK!

Hubby is a pilot. A very good, accomplished pilot. He has flown everything from a tiny little cessna to an Airbus 370 (I think I got that number right) He loves to fly. It is truly part of his persona:)

The thing about being a pilot for a living, is that the airline industry gets the flu when the ecomony gets a cold. Fortunately, Hubby currently flies a business jet & has largely been ok in the industry until some senators & congressmen (rightfully) chastised some auto executives for flying business jets to D.C. to ask for money for their failing businesses. This put business jets and the people who pay for them in a very. poor. light. 

His company has had to undergo a furlough. This is airline speak for a layoff, but they can hire you back when the company is doing better financially. Furloughs always goes in senority order, last hired is the first to be let go. I have been in heavy prayer that Hubby will be not be furloughed. His job provides our health insurance & allows me to be a stay at home mom. I don't like to think about the changes in our family's life if we both had to work and fortuantely, I won't have to for at least another year! We found out on Thurs. that Hubby has enough seniority to stay in the company & keep flying:)! This is a huge weight off all ourt shoulders, especially Hubby. He has been in a funk for several months now & today he was really able to breathe a sigh of relief & blow off some steam on his dirt bike!!

I can breathe a sigh of relief too, not only do I feel like I have my Hubby back, we don't have to take Little Man back top see the neurosurgeon or the cranio-facial surgeon until January!!!!!! And.... we got the green light to put his helmet back on!!!

I have been very, very thankful these past few days:)

On Halloween...

A child can be anything he or she wants to be!

(my response to Barbara's Halloween contest ending - oops! the 29th!)

Barbara over at TherExtras is holding a Halloween contest. Y'all should go on over there & give her a look. She is a gem in the blogosphere. She asks what are the benefits of costuming for a child. I immediately thought, ooh I can make this really therapeutic for Little Man! I could use pringles cans to support his legs & tp tubes to support his arms & then wrap him in aluminum foil & call him the tin man! Or I could wrap him up in several rolls of tp itself & make him a mummy! Or, he could just be himself:)

Then life got in thew way & my ideas went on thew back burner until our Church's fall festival when I really wanted to make a costume for Capt. Chaos so he wouldn't be the only kid there with no costume on. I asked him what he wanted to be & he said "Cowboy", so I thought, oh easy! He has a cowboy hat & boots so I just found a belt & a plaid shirt & brought it all together thinking I have such an easy boy to please. Upon seeing what I had assembled for him he said again "Cowboy" & pointed to the dog. Our dog's name is Cowboy. Sigh. He was a good sport though & went as a cowboy. Honestly, there were so many games there to play I doubt he even noticed other kids were in costume:)

So it got me thinking. Costuming is great anytime of the year:) Most days kids are expected to "be" something- well behaved, dressed, social, etc, etc. Halloween is the one day kids can be anything they want, even the dog:)

These are the versions of "Cowboy" Capt. Chaos tried on for The Fall Festival

Happy 1st Birthday !!!!!!

to my wonderful Little Man:)

He used to be

The Neighbor's Dog

But now,



He's Our Dog....

Welcome Home Cowboy

Many thanks to our wonderful neighbors, the Smith Family for allowing Cowboy to become part of our family

OK, last pool noodle post-

I'm wondering if Blogger is liking me tonite? It won't let me unload lots & lots of pics- anywhoooo

Noodles are great for helping Little Man fit into things that he is simply too skinny for. Like his high chair. We had a regular high chair, from when Capt. Chaos would submit to sitting in one, but Little Man would just swim in it. Literally, thank Goodness for straps or he would have slid out of it!

So I bought his feeding char that works sooo much nicer. He does fit into it nicely with no added support, however, recently, he grew longer (taller?) and lost 2 pounds :( from being on antibiotics for these blasted abscesses which has made him a bit weaker in his torso. While we are working on gaining weight & strength, a noodle has come in quite handy:)

All strapped in , ready for the tray to be snapped on...





Here he's looking to the right, which is a good thing- he tends to favor his left side, so we spend lots of time doing things to make him turn his head to the right:)

Perfect! You can't even tell he has a helping noodle:) He's got his thumb & looks pretty pleased with himself as well:)

The last thing (for now) that we use noodles for are for tummy time. We place a short piece under his chest/armpits so he has a head start in getting his head up. Its works great & he likes drooling on it too. I don't have a pic of that but I did find some pics of a new skill we have been working on......

First, we get a little lift to get us started.....

Then he can hold the bottle on our own!!!!!

He's been working on this for a while. He can only hold a smaller bottle & even then, he can only do it when its half full, but he can do it!!!

Fun with Pool Noodles Part II

More fun with pool noodles!

(because blogger would not let me up load the swing pics!)

Little Man LOVES his swing. He loves loves loves it. And from what I have been reading on other blogs, swinging is very good therapy. Its vestibular stimulation & every baby needs it:) And since Little Man loves to swing, who am I to deny him?
I did run into one problem though. I don't have the traditional indoor swing that lots of babies have. Capt. Chaos was more of a rocker & vibrating baby, so I have a chair that does that. The only swing we had was a little tykes outdoor swing, courtesy of Grandma on Capt. Chaos' 2nd birthday. Little Man is still too small for it, but he can sit up in it- with the help of some noodles:)

This is what he looked like the first time I put him in the swing...
The blankets weren't really doing it for him:(

Hmmm, not too sure about this...


Yeah, not too sure about it....


But with the help of a noodle, it can look like this.
I put one on each side with velcro sticky tape and cut to size a piece to go on the red piece for a little more support.

Here he is snug in the swing, but not too snug. He is pretty good about holding on once we get to swinging:) The great thing about noodles is the hollow center. Even when it rains, the water just drains on through:) (See that darn stitch abscess?)


SUCCESS!!!!!!

We like it now! I love how this really shows hoe well he can sit up & really see whats going on. This is one of Little Man's favorite things to do. I try to do it several times per week. Now that its not hot as blazes out & not raining & we have our hernia fixed as well as the abscesses, (whew!) I would like to do this every day with him.

As Promised...

FUN WITH POOL NOODLES!!!!!

at bath time:)

I use pool noodles with alot of Little Man's therapy. I also love to modify stuff I had used with Capt. Chaos with pool noodles so that I can use them again with Little Man.

Here is your standard baby tub. Great, but when your baby is loosy-with his body, you need alot more support. I first cut a noodle to size & put it around the head part of the tub. This way, when he sits upright in it, the pool noodle can support his head :)

Then the rest of the noodle is cut to fit across his lap. Kinda like he's in his own lil' race car:) Little Man was never really fond of bath time until I was able to rig this contraption up. The lap noodle comes out, but the head noodle I hot glued in place. Hopefully, even though its going to get wet, it will stay in place:)

All that tub excitement got him tired.....

Since these pics were taken, I have glued noodles to the other end as well as to the sides for extra support. I also have a not slip mat (the kind you put in kitchen drawers) I put over the whole shabang to really keep him in place:) Little Man has (very) unfortunately lost some weight & therefore strength being on antibiotics for the stitch abscesses so he needed a bit more support.

Really?!?

I needed this like I needed a hole in my head....

On Tues, we had a follow up appt. with our neurosurgeon, regarding these darn stitch abscesses that keep recurring. They seem to get better, heal over & just when you think they are gone, POW they open up with more pus than before. On Tues. I asked if we could do some sort of scan or ultra sound to see what's cooking in his head. One CT scan later, it was determined that it was a fairly large pocket of infection that would need to be surgically excised & cleaned out, followed by a heavy rotation of antibiotics... The good news? It did not involve bone, only soft tissue & that soft tissue did not include the dura or his brain.

sigh...

(warning: the last pic is of the stitch abscesses...not for the queasy....)

Looks comfy, no?

ChildLife brought Little Man this musical toy, I think he liked it! :)



Practicing tummy time!

Vancomyacin (I'm sure I mis-spelled it) does a real good job of creating a diaper rash, Little Man had his tushie aired out alot:)

and for anyone who was wondering...

just what a stitch abscess looks like.....

here is what we have been dealing with......

These two holes are what we have been dealing with for about 2 months, off & on. I have been told they would have occurred even if he did not have a helmet on his head. They are not touching the inside of his helmet, but because the helmet creates heat & sweat, it can exacerbate them. We have been seeing some really neat results with the limited time his helmet has been on so we are bummed that it will be awhile until he can wear it & continue the journey to a semi-round head.
So now, the holes have been surgically cleaned out and stitched back together loosely- with stitches that are not absorb able in the hopes that if there is continued draining, the skin will stay open long enough for it to drain out & then heal over. Hopefully, this will be the last of the abscesses.

He's been hard at work...

Here, he found my glasses and picked them up! He would look at things that were around him & kinda sorta reach out to them, maybe even rake at them with his fingers, but never really showed any interest in picking them up. Until now!

He picked them up, waved them around and had a great time looking at them. So far he has only done this with a spoon:)

There is also a good shot of his helmet here. Its above him & it come in 2 pieces. Once we get his stitch abscesses healed I'm going to ask the helmet people if they can either drill some air holes in it or remove maybe a piece from it. I dunno, we'll see:)

But here is our big accomplishment!

Head control!!!!!!

He has been able to consistently pick up & put down his head several times each tummy time session. He has the most control when he is on him tummy & sitting supported, but very little when he is in his Bumbo which makes me wonder why that is so.

Its also a big thing for him to do this with (of all things) his eyes open. You see, he works so hard to lift his head that his eyes are usually squeezed shut from the effort. Its really hard to "reward" a baby with a toy that is bright or lights up when his eyes are shut. We used lots of cheering & the dog's squeaky toys (thank you Mabel, she was a good sport!) Until he was strong enough to lift up his head & keep his eyes open. WOW! that opened up a whole new world to him & I think then it really "clicked" for him:)

His therapists say it shows great strength for him to not only lift his head, but that he puts it down slowly & then lifts again repeatedly. Alot of babies put their heads down rather quickly, but he puts his head down as slowly as he picks it up. :)

Next up......

Fun with pool noodles

and

Prop Sitting!!!!!